


Memorized

by raisingmybanner



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Blind Roy Mustang, F/M, Fluff, Fuhrer Roy Mustang, Post-Canon, Post-Promised Day, Romance, optional epilogue for Pyrolysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26391424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisingmybanner/pseuds/raisingmybanner
Summary: “I want to memorize you,” he says, as his fingers finish the last of their questing.It’s a statement that would make Riza roll her eyes in a drama or play. Overstated, lacking poetry or originality.But hearing the words like this, sinking into her skin as he tried so hard to do exactly that — she can’t roll her eyes. Something swells in her throat, and she has to clear it before it turns into something more dangerous.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 8
Kudos: 76





	Memorized

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This is some post-canon blind!Roy fluff that can stand on its own, but I did write it as a sort of optional epilogue for my other work -- Pyrolysis. Feel free to enjoy on its own, or check out Pyrolysis if you like what you see here!

Tea steeps in mugs on the coffee table, waiting until Riza deems it worthy of consumption. Roy has never been particular about his beverages, even claiming an ambivalence between tea and coffee that Riza cannot fathom. He will happily drink anything, as long as it doesn’t burn his mouth.

Riza’s mental timer is ticking, waiting for the tea to be Perfect, as she sinks into Roy and listens to the radio. A new drama started recently, and Roy insists on making time to listen to it, no matter what else he has going on.

 _“It’s compelling,”_ he says, which is the same as a glowing compliment from anyone else. Riza finds it all a little too cerebral, but she doesn’t mind listening. Not when it lands her in the rare position of being able to press into Roy’s side and monopolize one of his hands.

His hands are always so _busy._ Especially now that he’s fuhrer, he spends almost every waking hour doing something, reading something, going somewhere. The negotiations with Ishval are going well, but he won’t relax into any victory. He pores over historical precedents, strange overlooked laws, and anything he thinks might be useful — just as fast as Sheska can translate them. His fingers are always pressing, always gripping, always moving. It’s strange and wonderful to have an hour, once a week, when they are _still._

She is loath, even, to hand him a mug of tea. The feel of his arm relaxed on her shoulder, his hand splayed and still on her knee, is too peaceful.

The drama begins, and she does her best to listen. She can feel Roy relaxing, immersing himself in the audio. His fingers shift on her knee occasionally, but there is none of the idle drumming and tapping that usually occupies him during the day. He is too relaxed and too submerged in the fictional world of detectives and justice with a price.

She rests her head on the couch, bumping the side of his chest, until he shifts and pulls them closer together. Pulls her head fully onto his chest, even though she’s facing the wrong way to curl into him. He doesn’t seem to mind, and his thumb runs a few circles on her knee before going still again.

Riza doesn’t realize that she’s dozed until Roy is shifting, and she can hear the announcer talking about what’s coming on the radio next.

“I can see that this program interests you as much as it interests me,” he says, the amusement clear in his tone.

“I was cozy,” she defends, stretching a little and yawning. She doesn’t want to release his hand, though, so she laces her fingers into his and curls it across her stomach as she changes positions. Finds a better position to curl into him.

Maybe she _was_ tired. Her eyes are drifting closed again as she feels a cautious brush of fingers on her face. She smiles as the tentative touch pushes more confidently, running calloused fingers from her cheekbones to her chin.

“Can I —“ he starts, then pauses. The pause is enough to make her open her eyes and lean slightly, turning her head to look at his face properly.

The expression on his face is contemplative. No, more than that. It’s nervous and annoyed in turn, back and forth with dizzying speed.

“Yes,” she says, with as much caution as his initial touch a moment ago.

Because she knows she’s going to say yes, whatever it is. Roy doesn’t ask anything lightly, and he’s never asked her to do anything she wasn’t willing to do. He had only even ever come close _once._

“You don’t even know what I’m asking,” he complains.

She just smiles, turning her face sideways and leaning to press a kiss into the palm of his hand.

“Yes,” she repeats. “What is it?”

“I want to try — I would like — may I touch your face?” he says, and the false starts are so endearing that she thinks her heart is aching with something that is somehow more than love.

“You already did,” she points out, but her voice is soft.

It’s a shade of their usual banter, but a softer one. One they had stumbled into over the last few months, in quiet evenings and mugs of tea and dizzy conversations just before sleep.

“I want to know,” he presses on, his voice sinking into a quiet to match hers, “if it matches what I remember. What I remember — seeing.”

“Alright,” she says, sitting up and releasing his hand with some regret. She stretches fully, watching him as he shifts on the couch to face her.

It’s funny to see him with a leg pulled in front of him, sitting sideways on the couch. It’s so _relaxed_ and _normal._ He’s done it before, of course, but it strikes her every time. He spends so much of every day being so stiff and formal, it’s a world wonder every night when he unbuttons the top button or two of his shirt, rolls up his sleeves, slips off his shoes.

She pulls a leg in front of herself as well, mirroring his position as she plants the other leg on the ground. A little wiggling, and her knee bumps his. When he doesn’t move right away, she curls her fingers around his hands, which rest on his lap.

“Well?” she prompts.

That makes him smile a little, in spite of the nervous annoyance still jittering across his features. He pulls his hands free, and she leans forward. His fingers trail up her arm, barely making contact. Just enough to get his bearings, she knows. She recognizes the ghostly touches that he grants to table tops, chair backs, walls. Anything that stands between him and the thing he is really trying to find.

Then he moves from her arms to her shoulders, briefly lighting on her neck, and comes to rest under her jaw. Thumbs on her jawbone, near her chin, and the rest of his fingers spread comfortably.

Riza thinks that some people would stop there and ask if it was alright. If this was still alright. But Roy doesn’t. His expression shifts to one of focus, and she knows that he trusts her to tell him if he does something that makes her uncomfortable. It’s a trust that lets him live in the moment and give every second his full attention, which Riza knows. She has always been happy to give him this with something that came so naturally to her.

But she has never been on the receiving end of his focus. Not like this. His fingers move in a pattern that she can’t fully predict or understand, but at the same time, it doesn’t surprise her or set her off balance. He runs along the planes of her face, pushing and gliding and catching. Momentary pauses interrupt his unfathomable sequence, but he doesn’t ever stop for long. Even when his middle fingers run the curve of her ear, when his thumbs trace the shape of her lips and she has to resist the urge to kiss them as they pull away.

His touch runs shivers of heat and coiled desire through her skin, as it always does, but she stays still under his searching hands. Hoping that he is finding what he wants to find.

By the time he reaches the top of her nose, sweeping under her eyes, she can see the mounting frustration on his face.

“What’s wrong?” she asks when he pauses for more than a second or two. His thumbs are at the far corners of her eyes, his fingers in her hair and absently resting against her ears.

“I don’t know if I’m doing it right,” he says.

“It doesn’t matter, if it helps,” she tries, speaking slowly and watching for a reaction. His mouth pulls into a tighter line, and she knows what he’s going to say before he says it.

“It isn’t,” he says, and Riza releases a breath. “I’m not sure exactly what it’s supposed to do, if anything, but —“

He stops, collecting his thoughts, and Riza waits. Her hands had been resting in the space between them, but she moves one to his leg. Unmoving. Just there, as a point of warmth. And hopefully, reassurance.

She doesn’t know anything about this, either. Not specifically. Roy had found something approaching acceptance about the loss of his sight over the last five years, and Riza had been there along the journey. Picking up his coping strategies, adjusting her life around them. Sometimes she could even help him figure out an issue, but specific things still stymied either one or both of them. Riza is just grateful that the challenges she’s trying to solve these days involve the man she loves running his hands over her face, and not the threat of death or destruction.

“None of this information is going into the same place where I remember your face,” he finally says. “It’s a completely different kind of… input. I know what you feel like, now, but it doesn’t match up to what I remember of your face. Not exactly, anyway.”

His grip tightens slightly, the tips of his fingers pushing into her skin. Frustration, probably, but Riza knows her own hand on his leg tightens as her heart rate speeds up for a completely different reason.

“Sorry,” he says, immediately stretching his hands and pulling away. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she says, feeling the loss of his touch at once and pulling in a breath. “It didn’t hurt.”

“Alright,” he says, but his hands drop into his lap, and his head drops, too.

“Hey,” she says, reaching for his chin. She nudges it. Enough to encourage him to lift his head without forcing the issue. “Do you want to keep going? Is it good in a — different way?”

“What do you mean?” He acquiesces to her nudging, and she lets her hand fall back to his leg as his face comes back into view.

“I mean, I don’t know,” she says, shrugging. “You said it’s a different kind of input. Do you want that input? Do you want to have that knowledge, too?”

“I don’t know,” he says, but then immediately, “yes, of course, Riza.”

Her name from his mouth is new enough that it still surprises her sometimes, and it takes her a moment to speak again.

“Well, you can finish then, if you’d like,” she says.

Some kind of smile flickers onto his face for a moment. Ordinarily, it would be the kind of smile that she would want to remove from his face _immediately,_ but she thinks he might need a win right now.

“Alright,” he says, and the skimming touches run back up her arms, shoulders, neck, face, until he finds where he stopped.

There isn’t much left of her face, and it’s the work of a moment to trace the shape of her eyes, run gentle fingers across her eyelashes, brush along her eyebrows, and smooth stray hairs off her forehead and into her hairline.

“I want to memorize you,” he says, as his fingers finish the last of their questing.

It’s a statement that would make Riza roll her eyes in a drama or play. Overstated, lacking poetry or originality.

But hearing the words like this, sinking into her skin as he tried so hard to do exactly that — she can’t roll her eyes. Something swells in her throat, and she has to clear it before it turns into something more dangerous.

“Is that so?” she says, the wry tone softer than it would ordinarily be.

“I would think it was obvious,” he says, his fingers pausing in her hairline for a moment before pushing further back, burying his hands in her hair for the briefest moment before pulling away.

“That’s not very original,” she points out, running a hand through her own hair as he pulls his hands back to his lap.

He just shrugs, looking serious.

“It’s true.”

She looks at him for a moment. Half-curled in something of an awkward position, hair in his face, shirt wrinkled and partially unbuttoned, face relaxed of anything professional even as it creased in thought.

“I know,” she sighs, and he grins again suddenly.

“You don’t have to sound so _morose_ about it.”

“You’re just hopeless.”

“I’m not completely hopeless,” he says resentfully, and Riza can’t help herself.

She pushes forward and kisses him, one hand still on his leg as the other presses against the side of his face, sliding back to his neck.

“Not completely hopeless,” she agrees against his lips. “You have your uses.”

“That will teach me to say anything nice,” he grumbles, but she can feel his smile against her cheek.


End file.
